


hunt across the hallowed ground

by tosca1390



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Manga), Bleach
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-25
Updated: 2011-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:05:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is something coming. Mamoru doesn’t know what. He just knows</p>
            </blockquote>





	hunt across the hallowed ground

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-Stars in the SM world, and post-Arrancar Arc for Bleach.

*

Every once in a while, Usagi catches him reading the newspaper in bed.

It’s an old habit, one he can’t break. He waits until he thinks she’s sound asleep, and then peers at the articles. Lately, a weird sort of queasiness has taken up residence in his gut. It’s been a few months of explosions at random in the cities surrounding Tokyo, an uptick in paranormal activity that tingles in his fingertips, and he can’t help but look into it. It reads as it did at the beginning of this crazy journey he’s been on with her. This is how it all started; weird happenings, and dreams settling through his every sleeping moment as he tried to press through to school and studies. They are supposed to be past this now, and looking only to be ready for the future before them.

“There’s nothing for us to do, Mamo-chan,” she murmurs into the darkness one cool night, her fingers tripping along the line of his bare torso.

He doesn’t look at her for a long time. He can’t, really. There’s a sense of bringing it on them, on her—he doesn’t even know what it is. “I know,” he says at last, the newspaper crinkling under his fingertips.

She sits up next to him in bed. Her hair falls softly against his bare arm. “I know you know,” she says, voice syrupy with sleep.

Then, with her hands at his wrists, she kisses him, mouth sweet and soft. He can push the paper away, push it from his sight for now, and he does. But the ink stains his fingers and the sensation of dread remains, roiling low in his stomach even as he touches her with wide warm hands and a giving mouth.

There is something coming. Mamoru doesn’t know what. He just knows.

*

He’s walking back to his apartment from the hospital in the early spring darkness when it happens.

The hair on the back of his arms stands up, the air thickening around him. Grip tightening on his briefcase, Mamoru looks up into the dusky purple-blue sky, squinting. Clouds are sparse, but the sky looks torn, some sort of split in the space from rooftop to rooftop. The breeze is too cold for the day, slipping between the creases of his body and rippling his skin into goosebumps.

A sudden pressure lands on his shoulders, his head. He shuts his eyes for a moment. All the muscles of his body are heavy as lead, the air too thick to breathe. There is _something_ behind him, he’s certain.

It’s been a year, but he remembers what this feels like.

 _Youma_? He thinks as he drops his briefcase and kicks it to the side. It skids and comes to a rattling stop against the side of the building. There’s a pulse in his chest, warm and settling; his crystal, there if needed.

And then, he hears it.

It’s a wail, low and keening and horrific. The sound cuts into his ears and shudders right through his bones. Clenching his jaw, Mamoru pushes off his heels and towards the alleyway between the next two buildings. His blazer flutters behind him; he strips it and drops it to the ground, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Every step is fiercely earned, as if he is running through sand. There’s a chill at the nape of his neck, as if something is reaching for him—

He hits the sidewalk facedown, with the feel of a sharp claw around his ankle. The pain explodes at his temple and cheekbone, a throbbing ache. _This is what I get for leaving my sword at home_ , he thinks a little desperately as he rolls onto his back His glasses are lost to the pavement.

In front of him, it’s an empty, vast space where he _should_ see an enemy. There is a cold burn at his legs as it drags him back. His elbows scrape against the concrete. Mamoru scrambles with his hands, grasping at a light post. The muscles cord and flex in his arms, a harsh tear and shudder as he holds on.

The wail comes again, lower and heavier and more desperate. In front of his eyes, the air shimmers and modulates. There’s a sense of something there that he can feel, but the truth of the vision is just beyond his reach. All he knows is _evil_ ; it socks him right in the gut, a hard twist of nausea in his middle. His fingers ache as the thing pulls; his arms are beginning to give.

“Ichigo!”

A girl’s voice, strident and insistent, presses through the thick air. Mamoru inhales sharply and looks up, past the shimmering mass of air, towards the rooftops.

“Yeah, I see it, relax,” a man shouts back.

“Do you want to move along then?” she retorts.

Two figures land in the middle of the street, in black robes, tied snug at the waist. Blades hang slung across their chests. The man pulls his, a large awkward swipe of a sword; he handles it with ease. His hair, a candy-orange color Mamoru has only seen in the picture books he used to read Chibi-Usa, reflects in the bold steel of his blade.

“Rukia, I really don’t need this right now,” the man grinds out.

“Would you just kill it already? Idiot,” the girl, a small slip of a thing with dark hair and a fierce face, shoots back.

“You could both stop talking and give me a hand!” Mamoru shouts at the pair, sweat beading at his temple. His grip slips on the light post. Under his pant leg, he can smell his skin burning, a sharp sort of turn in his nose.

The two of them turn and stare at him, mouths agape and eyes wide.

“He can see us?” the man—Ichigo—says, and Mamoru can almost see the sweat forming at his brow.

“After, you idiot!” the girl all but screeches, brandishing her sword and pushing off her heels into the air, her body forming a graceful arc. It curves as her blade, an extended comma that she brings down mid-air into _something_.

Shaking his head, the man presses forward on the ground, moving so swiftly Mamoru can barely keep up. With a sharp swing of his blade, he relieves the pressure and grasp on Mamoru’s leg. Mamoru rolls to his side and up to a crouching position, watching short of breath as the two sword-handlers bring their blades down across what looks to be empty air.

But Mamoru can sense the mass there, a lingering desperate sort of evil. It leaves a sour taste in his mouth, and a burn in all his muscles. His ankle trembles, threatens to roll under his weight. But he has fought through worse before.

In an instant, the thick heaviness to the air is sucked away. The shimmer to the air fades, but it is not destroyed; Mamoru can sense the malignance still. He rises, favoring his left leg, as the robed figures land on their feet.

“You always waste time on the limbs, idiot,” the girl mutters, sheathing her sword.

“Don’t hate me because I’m better at this than you now,” the man replies with a sharp grin.

The girl’s gaze narrows. As fast as lightening, she throws an elbow into her companion’s gut and turns away. “Fool,” she says as he gasps breathlessly, mouth opening and closing like a fish.

“Excuse me,” Mamoru says at last, his hands forming uneasy fists.

The both of them look at him, the man straightening from his gut-clutching crouch. Their uneasiness settles on Mamoru’s shoulders, clear as day.

“You can see us?” the girl says, rather flat of tone.

Mamoru sets his jaw, breathing sharp and fast through his nose. Pain radiates through his bones and muscles, thick and unyielding. “Is this a surprise?”

“Rukia, do you—“

“Yes,” the girl—Rukia—cuts off Ichigo, voice quiet. “I feel it.”

“Who are you two?” Mamoru asks. There’s a foreign assertiveness in his voice he cannot place; it’s come over him slowly, since the future has begun to creep up on him with the mantle of king.

Rukia bows her head. Her hair glistens purple-black in the sunset. “No one,” she murmurs, her hand falling to Ichigo’s broad wrist. “Keep your eyes open,” she adds before she pushes up into the air, her robes fluttering in the air. She pulls Ichigo along with her; Mamoru can hear his grumbling and complaining as they flit across the rooftops and away.

Only when they have gone does Mamoru lean against the light post, limbs trembling with the effort to keep his weight balanced.

*

“What _happened_?” Usagi breathes as he limps through the front door of his apartment. She leaps up from the couch, her textbooks sprawled across the coffee table, and hurries to his side in a mass of blonde hair and pale skin.

“I don’t really know,” Mamoru says tiredly.

“Mamo-chan, you look awful,” she murmurs, her arms wrapped around his middle as she guides him to his couch. “Was there a problem at the hospital?”

“No,” he huffs out, stretching out across the couch with a long shudder. He’d taken a few moments to heal himself as best as he could, but his energy was weaker than usual, after the encounter with whatever that was. “Something attacked me.”

Usagi’s hands settle into stillness on his chest. She sits perched next to him on the couch, her body warm through his clothes. “Someone?”

“No, some _thing_ ,” he murmurs, sliding his fingers against the curve of her cheek and into the fall of her pigtails.

Her mouth falls into a thin line, her fingers clutching into his shirt. “That’s – that’s not supposed to happen anymore,” she says after a moment.

He watches her in the soft yellow light of his apartment, the shadows creasing the pale of her face. “It wasn’t – I don’t know what it was. But it wasn’t the usual youma,” he says after a moment. His palm fits easily at her cheek.

She looks away and down; her fingers tremble faintly on his shirt. He hates himself for this; he can see the wheels turning in her head, the memories of times before filtering back. It has only been a year since the fight with Galaxia, and the encounter in the Chaos Cauldron. Now is supposed to be their time, the calm before the future. It is supposed to be quiet, and only theirs; something has gone wrong.

“So what was it?” she asks finally, raising her face to his. Her mouth and eyes are lined with steely resolve, a determination he knows well.

“I couldn’t see it. I felt it. It was – it was a mass, something like an evil spirit,” he says, relaxing back into the couch cushions. His head falls to the arm of the couch.

Sighing, she stretches out next to him, tucked between his side and the back of the couch. Her face rests at the hollow of his shoulder, her arm loose at his middle. He slides his fingers through her hair. “So much for a quiet date night,” she murmurs. “How did you get away?”

“There were two that appeared to help, a man and a woman. They knew how to deal with it. They were surprised I could see them, though,” he says, shutting his eyes.

“Oh, damn,” she mutters. Her mouth settles near the open collar of his button-down shirt, warm on his skin. “If it’s spirits, we should talk to Rei first. Maybe she’s sensed something.”

Mamoru holds her closer, breathing through the lingering remnants of pain. Darkness settles at his gaze, his chest. His skin burns where the spirit touched him.

“I thought we were done with this, Mamo-chan,” Usagi says after a moment, her voice muffled into his skin. She is small and slight in his arms, yet he knows the strength in the line of her muscle and bone, the power at her fingertips. It still catches him off-guard sometimes.

He’s not sure why he says what he does; it comes from the ease and assurance of Rukia and Ichigo, the weight of responsibility he saw on their shoulders. “I don’t know if this is our fight, Usako,” he says at last.

*

What is supposed to be a private meeting with Rei has turned into a free-for-all with the rest of the Senshi. The six of them wait for her in the family sitting room connected to the temple, clean white lines and an airy feel. Rei is inside with the fire, as Ami peers at the burn mark on Mamoru’s ankle.

“This is fascinating,” she murmurs to herself, tapping on her computer.

Mamoru sighs and leans against the wall. “What is it?”

“I have no idea,” Ami says, still typing away.

“So this was a ghost?” Minako says, mouth turned down into a tight frown.

“I’m not sure,” Mamoru replies, biting down on a hiss as Ami presses just a bit too hard.

“And there were two people with swords who saved you?” Makoto adds from her place on the opposite side of the room, stretched out. Her brow furrows, bangs falling across her forehead.

“Don’t you believe me?” he asks, mouth curling at the corners.

Sitting next to him, Usagi catches his hand in hers, a brief warning squeeze. “Of course she does,” she says, shooting him a look. It’s more fond than disapproving, but all the same he holds his tongue. “I think we’re all trying to decide how worried to be.”

Minako snorts, tossing her hair over her shoulders. “I already know. I’m _worried_.”

“Well of course you are,” Makoto mutters.

“What does that mean?” Minako exclaims.

Grinning, Makoto turns to lie flat on her back on the clean smooth wood floor, her hands propped under her ponytail as a pillow. “You can’t let yourself relax, Mina-chan.”

Pressing her mouth to his shoulder, Usagi muffles a laugh; he can feel it reverberate through his shirt and skin. Her hair falls in thick tails across his thighs. Ami just sighs, sparing them a brief glance before she closes up her computer and peers at the dark marks along his ankle.

Minako’s mouth falls open. “I do too! Anyway, _someone_ has to be vigilant!”

“We’re all pretty vigilant,” Makoto murmurs.

“Hey, I have a sword, and I will use it on you!” Minako squeals.

The hair on the nape of his neck rises. He turns his face towards the outer door that opens to the temple courtyard. Through the thin white walls, he can see shadows in the courtyard, dark and slim from the sunlight. “Someone’s outside,” he says softly.

Usagi raises her head, meeting his eyes. “Someone or something?”

“Someone,” he repeats.

It’s then that the door to the fire slides open. Rei, clad in her thick white priestess robes belted at the waist, steps out. “Someone’s here,” she says, mouth pursed thin.

“We got that, yeah,” Minako mutters.

“I’ll be right back, after dealing with them,” Rei says, her gaze flickering over to where he and Usagi sit. “Then we’ll talk.”

“Is it bad?” Usagi asks quietly. He tightens his fingers into hers instinctively.

“Is it the enemy?” Minako immediately asks, her hands resting stiffly on her hips.

Rei, smooth and implacable, brushes her dark hair from her shoulders and tucks her hands into the wide sleeves of her robe. “Just hold on, and I’ll be back,” she says as she moves to the outer doors.

She slides the door open with ease, stepping out gracefully. Sunlight, bright and piercing, floods his gaze. But he sees hair the color of orange candy, reflected in the light. His hand twitches in Usagi’s. The door slides shut.

“Mamo-chan?” Usagi asks, right near his ear.

He breathes in slowly, sliding his hand from hers. There’s a heaviness settling in his limbs and lungs, familiar from yesterday. It comes from the south, he thinks. How he knows, he’s not entirely sure. “That was one of them.”

“Who?” Minako asks as he stands.

His muscles, still aching and stretched from yesterday’s incursion, scream and complain. He bears them no mind. “Something’s coming,” he murmurs.

Usagi is on her feet and moving towards the door in a flash, too quick for him to grasp her by the wrist. “I feel it too,” she says as she slides the door open and hurries outside. Immediately, he and the other girls are at her heels.

Staring Rei down in the courtyard are Rukia and Ichigo. The breeze flutters through their starkly colored hair, the hem of her skirt and the folds of his jacket. He’s not surprised to see them, really. They also do not seem surprised to see him, either.

“Rukia, it’s—“

“I _know_ ,” Rukia hisses, cutting Ichigo off. “Sometimes, I don’t know how you’ve gotten as far as you have.”

Ichigo’s whole face twists on itself as his brow furrows. “Hey! Remember that time when I _saved_ you?”

“Remember all the times you nearly bled to death in the process of unnecessarily saving me and you had to be saved by a cat?” she retorts.

“That actually happens more than you’d think. It’s not as shameful as you’re making it sound,” Usagi murmurs from Mamoru’s left side, her hand secure in his.

Ichigo’s face colors a bright red. “When you say stuff like that, it makes me think you don’t appreciate me,” he mutters.

“You are a complete fool, Ichigo,” Rukia snaps back.

“As adorable as this is,” Rei cuts in, arms crossed over her chest, “you two said you had business here?”

Rukia’s violet eyes sit on Mamoru, her gaze even and steady. “They’re coming for you both,” she says, her eyes flickering to Usagi and then back to him.

Ichigo slaps his hand to his forehead and groans. “Rukia, you’re going to scare them if you talk like that,” he mutters.

“We’re fine, actually,” Minako says dryly. “But thanks for the thought.”

“Who are _they_? And who are you?” Makoto asks, voice stretching abrasively through the air.

Rukia and Ichigo exchange a look. Ichigo scratches a hand through his bright hair, grinning a little sheepishly. “Maybe we can come inside?” he asks.

*

“Just once, I’d like not to be hunted by weird things,” Usagi says later, after they’ve all left the temple. Rukia and Ichigo have been dragged away by Minako and Makoto and Ami for research and strategizing purposes, leaving Usagi and Mamoru to themselves. The afternoon is fading into slow cool dusk, the sky a soft orange-blue.

Mamoru smiles, just the corners of his mouth turning up. He keeps her hand tucked in his as they walk, her knuckles brushing his hip. “At least it really isn’t our problem.”

“Sure,” she says, shaking her hair out behind her. “We just have to stay not-eaten long enough for those two to find us.”

“They’re Soul Reapers. They’re good at this, obviously,” he says.

Sighing, Usagi tightens her fingers in his. “It makes me wonder, you know? How much else is out there that we don’t know about? I had no idea that Soul Reapers even existed. Isn’t that something we should know about?”

They turn down the sidewalk in the direction of her family’s house. It’s a night they’ll spend apart, when she can’t convince her parents she’s with one of the girls. After the hours spent with Rukia and Ichigo, learning about their roles and the existence of Hollows, he wants to keep Usagi close, just in case. But there’s nothing to be done about it now, unless he’s willing to brave the wrath of her parents. Today doesn’t feel like his lucky day in that department.

“I think there are some things that aren’t our domain,” he says after a moment, thumbing the curves of her knuckles. She tucks herself closer to his side, her cheek laying on the upper arm of his jacket. “And I don’t think we have to fix everything.”

She huffs, a sharp sound in the quiet air. “What’s the use of ruling the world if we can’t fix things?”

“Their world isn’t ours to have power over,” he says, mouth grazing the crown of her head. There’s a lingering shiver in his bones when he thinks of Rukia and Ichigo’s tasks; they are constantly at war with the darker sides of humanity, shades of evil from which there is no redemption. It’s unfamiliar to him, to all of them; it exhausts him just thinking about it.

She stops abruptly, underneath a budding tree. They are a block from her house, where her family waits. “Then what does it want with us?” she asks, looking up at him.

He leans back against the tree trunk. She follows, their feet sinking into the soft ground around the roots. A breeze shivers through the crevices between their bodies. “I don’t know. What it usually wants: power,” he says quietly, smoothing the fingertips of his loose hand across the lines of her cheek and brow.

Smiling slightly, she leans into his chest, her spine arching. Their fingers remain latched between them. “They’re funny,” she murmurs.

“Who?” he asks.

“Rukia and Ichigo,” she says with a grin, her eyes bright in the sunset.

A soft laugh presses through his chest. “That’s a word for them, yes,” he says dryly, sliding his hand through her hair.

Rising on her toes, she catches his mouth with hers. He shuts his eyes just for a moment, his fingers curling around smooth lengths of her hair. Her mouth is warm and soft under his. Briefly he forgets this new strange twist to their lives, and just think of her, the solidity of her heart beating against his.

Her teeth scrape at his bottom lip as she pulls away. “Mama’s expecting me for dinner,” she says with a sigh. In the dusky light he can see the flush on her cheeks.

He leans down and kisses her just once more, a chaste glancing of their mouths. “It’s going to be okay,” he says quietly.

She smiles faintly. There’s a soft resilience to her in this light that he can never fully capture in his mind’s eye, when he thinks on it later in the staid emptiness of his apartment. “We always say that,” she says, a little sadly.

“I’m almost always right,” he says, lifting her hand to his mouth and grazing his lips across her knuckles as they walk on towards her front walkway.

*

Mamoru walks home from the hospital, his usual route, three days later. That’s where they find him, on a street corner three blocks from his apartment building.

“It has been too quiet,” Rukia says as she and Ichigo all but materialize before him, dressed casually. A tension thrums between the two of them; they stand too close together to just be partners and friends, Mamoru thinks. But he’s nothing close to an expert, as he has been reminded many a time.

“Too quiet?” he asks, looking from Rukia to Ichigo as he shifts his grip on his briefcase. Today is too warm for the season, the sun harsh on his shoulders and eyes. A headache lingers at his temples from too much reading without his glasses. He still needs a new pair from the attack a few days ago.

Ichigo rolls his eyes, hands stuffed in his jeans pockets. “That’s what she says. She can never appreciate a break,” he mutters.

“Because it usually means something _bad_ is going to happen, you imbecile,” she retorts. “You’ve been doing this for how long now?”

“Okay, okay,” Mamoru cuts in before Ichigo can open his mouth. “Are you following me because you expect it to pick me?” he asks.

“It picked you before,” Rukia says flatly. “So, yes.”

“But you can’t just follow me around until it decides to try for me,” he says.

Ichigo scoffs. “Don’t tell her that. She’s done it before with other people.”

Rukia jabs her elbow into Ichigo’s ribs, a small grin playing at her mouth. “In this, you don’t have a choice,” she says, in a tone that brooks no argument and reminds him strongly of Minako, when she exercises her power as leader. “You’re important for the future of the physical planet and the humans here. You can’t be left vulnerable to attacks from the other side.”

“She’s right,” Ichigo says, mouth softening as he glances at Rukia. A settled sort of seriousness envelopes him. Mamoru can see the strength and power in his gaze, the set of his face. Brash and talky he might be, but he also knows the power he wields and what he needs to do. “We were sent here specifically to take care of this threat, and we’ll do it however we have to.”

Mamoru sets his jaw, biting back a frown. “Have you been following me this whole time?”

Rukia and Ichigo exchange a look. “Of course,” Rukia says.

“You didn’t notice? Excellent,” Ichigo says with a grin. Rukia just rolls her eyes. “What?” Ichigo asks, arms spreading wide at his sides as he looks at her. “It means we’re getting better at this.”

“It means _you’re_ getting better at not being completely obvious,” she mutters.

Shaking his head, Mamoru rests his briefcase over his shoulder and begins to walk down the sidewalk towards his apartment. As he expects, they are at his sides in an instant. “Do you know why it’s us?” he asks after a moment. In the time they had spent with him and the girls at the temple, between the explanation of Hollows and Reapers and a world they had no imaginings towards, he had forgotten to ask. He thinks he might know – the answer is almost always the same.

Rukia and Ichigo are oddly quiet for a moment. The silence is strange between them, and he’s only known them for days. He keeps his eyes forward, palm damp at the handle of his briefcase.

“Your spiritual energies are off the charts,” Rukia says at last. Mamoru glances at her, watching as her fingers pluck at the cuffs of her sleeves. “It was only a matter of time before they took note.”

“Even though we’re not dead?”

“They came after me, and I’m very not dead,” Ichigo says.

“Yet, anyway,” Rukia mutters, partly to herself.

Ichigo groans, a mockingly wounded sound. “Threats are so unattractive on you, Rukia.”

“Don’t test me, Ichigo,” she says warningly.

Mamoru, despite the uneasiness in his chest, can’t help but smile slightly into the deepening dusk.

*

Rei feels it before he does, when it happens.

He waits at the steps to the temple courtyard for Usagi, a pleasant spring breeze ruffling through his clothes and hair. Patient, he leans against the rail, a novel open in his hand. As usual, the girls have kept her later than expected; he doesn’t mind. There are conversations he’s not meant to be privy to, moments she needs just with her friends, the family she has fashioned and brought together from the wreckages of everyone else’s lives.

At a distance, Ichigo and Rukia wait. It’s been two days since their meeting on the street; they’ve shadowed him and Usagi since then. Ichigo had been right; they are quite good at leaving enough distance to not be noticed unless Mamoru is thinking about it.

From up the steps and beyond, he hears the slide and thunk of the wood door. He looks up and sees Usagi walking with Rei, their faces turned towards each other and Usagi’s hand at Rei’s elbow. They are smiling; Usagi laughs, bright and clear in the air, and he tucks his book into his briefcase with a slight smile.

The footsteps stop abruptly. He looks up again and finds Rei motionless, twenty feet from him. Her pale hand close at Usagi’s wrist, halting her as well. Rei is pale, her eyes narrowing as they dart from side to side. The familiar crows that make their homes in the temple trees scatter from the courtyard to the safety of the branches.

“Rei, what –?” Usagi starts, and then he feels it, the thickening of the air, the pressure on his limbs.

“Run!” he hears Rukia yell from behind him.

The mass settles and shimmers behind Usagi and Rei. The breeze dies; it feels as if all the air is vacuumed from the courtyard, the sun losing its warmth on his skin. Mamoru drops his briefcase and takes the steps three at a time just as Rei shoves Usagi towards him. Her fingers dig into the wide pockets of her robes, coming up with the thin strips of parchment scrawled with spells.

“Can you see it?” he yells to Rei as his hands close on Usagi’s arms. He pushes her behind him, backing her up.

“Enough of it!” Rei calls back over her shoulder before she sends the spells out towards the shuddering air.

It’s then that Rukia appears at his side, her dark eyes flitting from him to Usagi at his back. “Stay back,” she murmurs. She is swathed in her dark robes, her sword sheathed across her shoulders.

Usagi’s fingers clutch at the back of his jacket, her weight heavy at his back. “I can hear it,” she whispers, voice thin in his ear.

Rei’s curses stick in the shimmering air, and yes – Mamoru can hear it, the piercing keen of the spirit, the hunger and the desperation. It settles at his temples and lays thick on his limbs. Rukia passes them as Ichigo hurtles towards Rei and the empty courtyard from the opposite side, his blade glinting sharply in the sunlight.

Swallowing hard, Mamoru fights against the heaviness in his limbs and turns to face Usagi. Ears ringing, he tucks her into his chest and pushes them back to the nearest tree trunk, a steady balance to rest against. “It’s okay. We’re okay,” he grits out, his hands caught in handfuls of her hair.

She shakes in his arms, her fingers biting into his chest. Behind him, Rei shouts curse after curse, as Ichigo and Rukia shout directions and orders to each other. The air is so thick, so stuffed with negative energy that he drops to his knees, his hands falling to Usagi’s hips.

“Mamo-chan –“ Usagi murmurs, kneeling with him. Her hands fall to his face, her fingers curving to the lines of his jaw. She trembles but keeps her gaze steady on his, her mouth set in somber lines. “Stay with me,” she says, the color draining from her face.

The roaring in his ears and the pulsing in his limbs and bones is too much. He drops his head to her shoulder, his hands tightening at her hips. His ankle, the one still marked from his last encounter with the Hollow, throbs and burns.

Then, just as suddenly, the pressure releases. The low keen disappears, the weight dissipates. He sucks in a sharp clean breath just as Usagi puts his hands to the nape of his neck.

“I think it’s gone,” she murmurs near his ear, her lips grazing his skin. There is a strange sort of calm in her voice; he wonders what, if anything, she could see of it.

Muscles aching still, he pushes himself to a stand. The headache lingers at his temples. He pulls her up with him, turning out to look to the courtyard. Rei, wind-whipped and pale, stands surrounded by a littering of her parchments. Ichigo and Rukia are sheathing their swords nearby. Blood drags slowly down Rukia’s brow and cheek.

“Got it?” Mamoru asks finally, his voice hoarse.

Rukia neatly wipes the blood from her cheek with her sleeve, smiling grimly. “Got it.”

“Nice kill, if I say so myself,” Ichigo says with a tired grin.

“You always do,” Rukia mutters. She tries to wave his hands away from her face, but he is persistant, and soon she just stands with the look of the long-suffering across the lines of her face as he touches her wounds with careful fingers. It’s a tender moment, thickening the air; Mamoru looks away, to Usagi, who is still too pale, but steady on her feet.

“If we could avoid those from now on, I’d like that,” Usagi says, gripping his hand in hers.

Mamoru pulls her hard against his chest and breathes her in, just as the other girls appear through the doorway and start rattling off question after question. He presses his cheek to Usagi’s hair and shuts his eyes.

He’ll let Rei handle the girls, for now.

*

The next morning, as Mamoru and Usagi step out onto the sidewalk from his apartment building, they run nearly right into Ichigo and Rukia.

“We wanted to say goodbye,” Ichigo says with a grin, hands stuffed in his jeans pockets. His hair is blindingly orange in the spring sunlight.

“You did, you mean,” Rukia murmurs, tucking her dark hair behind her ears. In the morning light, they look no different from teenagers on their way to school, innocent of the darker turns and twists of the world. Mamoru, of all people, knows how deceptive that can be.

Her hand secure in his, Usagi smiles at the two of them. “I’m glad you did,” she says. She is still too pale for his liking, but the effects of the almost-attack from the Hollow seem to have dissipated, with no lingering after affects. That’s all that matters to Mamoru. “We really appreciate your help.”

“It’s just our job,” Ichigo says, his chest puffing up just the slightest.

Rukia rolls her eyes and smacks his arm twice. “If all remains as it should, you will not be seeing us again,” she says, head bowed in deference. “We will ensure that your future is unencumbered by the spirits of our world.”

“If there’s ever anything we can do…” Usagi trails off, glancing up at Mamoru for a moment before she looks back to Rukia and Ichigo. “I’d want you to feel welcome to ask,” she finishes softly, chin tilted up. Even in her school uniform, she reminds him of a future self he has yet to see. It clenches deep in his middle, the anticipation of it.

“We thank you for that,” Rukia says, dipping into a slight bow.

“But we hope we don’t have to,” Ichigo adds, also dipping his head.

“So do I,” Mamoru says wryly. “Thank you again, for everything.”

With one last wave from Ichigo, he and Rukia turn and walk away from them, in the opposite direction. Their hands graze each other’s at their sides as they disappear around the corner.

Sighing, Usagi leans her chin against his arm, her face turned up to his. The sunlight reflects brightly against her hair, golden and soft in the spring air. “I liked them,” she says after a moment.

Mamoru leans down and kisses her lightly, his thumb mapping the line of his knuckles. “Me too.”

“Maybe we will see them again,” she says a little wistfully as they begin to walk towards the high school.

“Maybe,” he murmurs, tightening his fingers in hers as they turn the corner.

He doesn’t say he’d rather not.

*


End file.
